


Long Way Home

by tucuxi



Series: A Greater Compliment [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-28
Updated: 2011-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tucuxi/pseuds/tucuxi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>As soon as Shizune was out of earshot, Kakashi turned on Iruka, furious.  But before he could open his mouth, Iruka said: </i></p><p><i>“Kakashi.  I just </i>carried<i> you here.  If </i>I<i> can carry you here, against your will – if I can drag you </i>anywhere<i> you don’t want to go – you know as well as I do that something’s wrong.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Way Home

Kakashi had minced no words three years ago when he’d told the Third Hokage exactly what he thought of the quality of the mission desk’s fact-checking after the Wave Country incident.

He was planning on doing the exact same thing to Tsunade as soon as his team made it home to Konoha. He anticipated strong words, maybe some yelling, and possibly some demonstrative bleeding. And then he was going to stand right there and watch as Iruka – or whoever was on the desk – made a note for the rest of the staff:

 __

Verify that clients are not wanted by missing-nin, bandits, or local lords

Then he was going home and sleeping for several days.

Of course, they had to get back to Konoha first.

Kakashi looked over one shoulder, ignoring the twinge from his collarbone and shoulder, and checked that his teammates were keeping up: he’d been setting a fast pace, but one they should be able to maintain for another few hours. Suzume was breathing heavily, and Iwashi still had a pronounced limp, his leaps from branch to branch decidedly irregular, but they were both close behind him.

Kakashi stopped suddenly, crouched on a tree branch and holding one hand up in warning: the other two stopped immediately, but not quite silently – his inner teacher cringed at the clumsiness that displayed; his inner paranoid automatically calculated how far away that might have been heard. He scanned the area carefully: they weren’t quite within Konoha’s borders yet, and he thought he’d seen a flash of light in the branches ahead.

After a moment, he waved his team forward, keeping point and carefully not wincing when each step-jump made his side spike with pain. Suzume was a kunoichi instructor, not a fully-trained medi-nin, and he had refused to let her exhaust herself trying to heal anything non-fatal: she’d already had her work cut out for her with Iwashi’s head wound and shattered leg. Fortunately, she was largely uninjured, having taken the Hokage’s declaration about medical personnel not getting hit in the first place to heart. As it was, even if he were inclined to set a faster pace, neither of them would be able to keep up for very long, so there was little reason to push them any harder.

The mission had been listed as fairly simple: escort a merchant and his extremely valuable cargo back to his home city. The client had insisted on classifying it as (and paying for) a B-class. It had been an unremarkable trip until they were just a day’s journey from the merchant’s home city. _Then_ it had come out that the merchant’s previous guards had not died of an illness on the road, as he had claimed –- unless “decapitation” was now an illness. No, the merchant had stolen much of his cargo -- several thousand ryo worth of valuables -- from a local lord, who had then hired missing-nin to recover his property. If it hadn’t been so painful, Kakashi would have laughed at the stupidity of it all.

So his little three-man team had taken on more than twice their number, several of whom had actually been quite competent fighters, and come out of it alive, if not quite unscathed. They were nearly home: to get so far so quickly, none of them had slept in more than a day.

Kakashi pressed a hand to his side, feeling the bandages wrapped tight around his ribs, and felt a jagged slice throbbing along the length of his thigh.. They were only a couple of hours from Konoha, and he had no intention of slowing down. He kept an open eye, and mentally rehearsed what he would say to the Hokage when they returned.

Kakashi was just debating whether or not he would detail exactly what the merchant had stolen when they passed through Konoha’s barriers, his hands forming the seals automatically to let them through. It didn’t matter how tired he might be – he could do that set of hand signs in his sleep, and he was pretty sure he had done so at least once. A short time later, he was waving Iwashi and Suzume toward the hospital, smiling and assuring her that he would certainly get his leg looked at. He made a note to tell Tsunade later that whoever was teaching injury identification was dangerously reliant on chakra: in her chakra-depleted state, Suzume hadn’t noticed his cracked ribs or dislocated collarbone until he’d asked her to bind them: that kind of oversight could kill an inexperienced teammate.

A half dozen blocks more, a handful of jumps from roof to roof, and he was at the mission room. Kakashi slid the window open and lounged against the frame, leaning in partway on his left arm. The room was fairly empty – this late in the evening, most people were at home, or settling in for one more night in the field before returning to Konoha. No more than half a dozen shinobi remained in the room.

“Hokage-sama,” he said, from outside the window, “permission to deliver a preliminary verbal report?”

“Certainly.” Tsunade sounded calm and poised, rather than curious, the picture-perfect Hokage. Then she ruined it by snapping, “But get in the room, already, brat. Some of us like to keep the heat _in_ the building.” Iruka smiled from behind her, looking up from the form on the desk before him. Kakashi gave a brief nod, feeling warmth begin to curl lazily through him at the sight of Iruka’s smile. Unfortunately, hopping up over the windowsill was more effective than any cold shower had ever been: he didn’t flinch as his collarbone wrenched and his leg flared in pain, but it was a near thing. Tsunade narrowed her eyes at him, glaring at the bloodstained bandages holding his weapons pouch to his leg. He saw her draw breath to yell, and cut her off by slamming the window shut behind him. He leaned back on the frame.

“Mission completed successfully, no fatalities.” Kakashi stated first, then continued. “Suzume and Iwashi are being checked into the hospital with near-incapacitating chakra fatigue, a severe concussion, a badly-broken leg and more minor injuries than I care to list. Our client had neglected to mention that much of his cargo was stolen from a lord whose lands lie between Otafuku Gai and Konoha. That lord hired missing-nin to recover his property on the way to the client’s home. We also encountered the lord’s hired men on our way back to Konoha, when our client was no longer present.” His voice was hard and flat. “The lord had instructed them to make an _example_ of us.”

No one else in the room was talking anymore, and a younger chuunin by the far wall looked like he wasn’t breathing, either, trying to make himself as invisible as possible. Kakashi considered reigning in his chakra, and decided against it: he was too depleted to do anyone here any harm, and he wanted Tsunade to be able to tell _exactly_ how pissed off he was. She wasn’t going to be happy about having to deal with the political fallout of a local lord hiring men to kill three Konoha shinobi, but he wasn’t happy about his team having been targeted after the mission’s completion. And more than that, he wanted her to remember one other thing.

Kakashi stood and walked close enough to glance over at the desk. It looked like Iruka had taken notes already: good.

“I suggest we verify that our future clients are not being targeted by hired killers, Tsunade-sama,” he said, turning and walking out, pausing at the doorway to flash her a polite, false (mostly invisible) smile. Kakashi let the door shut behind him, not easing it closed quietly – the slight *thump* as good as a slam.

He made it out of the building and out of sight before he leaned against a wall for a moment, considering going to the hospital himself: but the idea of spending the night alone in a sterile hospital room was distinctly unappealing. He straightened up and continued home, careful not to limp.

 

* * * * * *

When Iruka got home, he was only a little bit surprised to see a bloody vest and an extra pair of sandals in the genkan. Kakashi usually went back to his own apartment after a mission, but he had been coming over to Iruka’s apartment more often in the last month or two, and he had looked completely exhausted when he had stopped in at the mission desk, earlier.

“I’m home,” he called, knowing that Kakashi would already be aware of his arrival. When he received no response, Iruka slipped off his own sandals and walked toward the bathroom.

Kakashi was seated straddling the edge of the tub, a neatly folded pile of clothes beside him on the floor. He had bandages wrapped tight around his ribs and right shoulder, and was undoing another set from around his thigh one-handed, pulling away layers of cloth dark with drying blood. Iruka walked in, grabbed a towel and put it in easy reach. Kakashi nodded before attempting to remove the last layer of bandages, pulling them free with a single sharp yank. There was a sticky, peeling sound that made Kakashi clench his jaw, and Iruka wince in sympathy. Kakashi leaned down to gather the blood-stained bandages and set them under the faucet, beneath a steady trickle of cold water.

When Kakashi straightened up again, Iruka got his first good look at the gash on Kakashi’s thigh. His breath hissed out through his teeth as he looked down at it: the jagged cut ran diagonally across Kakashi’s thigh. Much deeper, and it might have severed the muscle deeply enough to risk permanent damage. The edges were an angry red, inflammation puckering the skin.

“That looks _really_ bad,” he said, “are you ...”

“It’s fine,” Kakashi said, “it’s not as bad as it looks.”

 _Well, that’s good_ , Iruka thought, _because it looks like it’s going to take off your whole leg._ Aloud, he said only “Do you want me to do it?” Kakashi was perfectly capable of dealing with his injuries, but Iruka always offered; Kakashi always turned down the help. This time, Kakashi surprised him.

“Yes.” Kakashi leaned his head back against the tiled wall, stretching his leg out across the tub so that nothing would spill on the floor. He shut his eye. “Thank you.” His posture spoke plainly of exhaustion, and Iruka ducked his head, trying to hide his surprise.

“All right.” He ran warm water in the sink, washing his hands and then building up a good amount of soap lather. “This is going to sting,” he said. Kakashi snorted: _Tell me something I don’t know_ , he might have said. Iruka flushed and began working the soap lather into the ragged edges of the wound, trying to ignore how Kakashi tensed, how drawing in a sharp breath when Iruka’s hand slipped made Kakashi freeze entirely, left hand moving to his ribs. Iruka rinsed the cut clear with warm water, watching red-pink foam swirl down the drain. On the fifth repetition, the cut rinsed clear. Iruka sighed, and pulled out antitbiotic cream.

“You might want to get stitches in this,” he offered tentatively, smearing ointment into the cut, avoiding the skin around it. “I don’t know if taping it will hold.”

Kakashi opened his eye and looked down.

“It’ll be fine for tonight,” he said. Iruka couldn’t tell if he meant to get it looked at later, or not: sometimes Kakashi was, in Iruka’s opinion, a little too stubborn about going to the hospital. Iruka leaned over to the cabinet and pulled out a roll of tape and scissors, making up butterfly bandages with the ease of practice. Kakashi barely moved the entire time, sitting still against the wall and watching Iruka through a half-open eye. Finally, Iruka wrapped a length of bandage over the whole thing.

“All right,” he said, sitting back on his heels, “are you hungry? I’ve only got leftovers, but...”

“That’s fine,” Kakashi said, putting his feet flat on the ground, pushing himself up on his left arm. “We didn’t eat much today.” _We didn’t eat at all today_ , Iruka translated.

“I’ll go get it heated up. Um,” Iruka said, glancing at Kakashi’s folded, bloody clothes, “feel free to grab whatever you want from my closet. It’s kind of chilly in here.”

When Kakashi came back in sweatpants and socks but no shirt, his face almost seemed more naked than his bandaged chest. Iruka waved him to sit down at the table, and finished serving up the food. He was pretty sure that Kakashi had left one of his cowled shirts here, but maybe he was mistaken. When Kakashi ate dinner entirely left-handed, Iruka re-evaluated. Putting on a shirt would have involved moving his right arm, which Iruka hadn’t seen Kakashi do all evening.

Once Iruka had gathered up the dishes and moved them to the sink, he moved to stand behind Kakashi and put one hand lightly on each shoulder. Even through the bandages, the right shoulder was warmer to the touch, and Kakashi went very still beneath his hands. Iruka didn’t ask, just spread his fingers and let chakra flow into the right shoulder: he wasn’t a healer, but his kids got hurt often enough that he’d learned the very basics, enough to patch a cut or dull pain temporarily. Kakashi relaxed almost imperceptibly.

“My collarbone was dislocated forwards,” he said. Iruka hmm’d, and raised his fingers to Kakashi’s neck. Kakashi turned his face into Iruka’s touch, relaxing a little bit more. _Don’t do this to yourself_ , Iruka wanted to say, _Don’t come home to me in such bad shape_. But even if they had been in the habit of talking about such things, Iruka would never make such a demand. This was Kakashi’s job, and Iruka’s, and if it demanded blood, they bled. Iruka just wished Kakashi didn’t have to bleed so much, or so very often.

Iruka had been planning to work on lesson plans tonight. Instead, he curled his hand around Kakashi’s uninjured shoulder.

“Come to sleep,” he said, tugging lightly, cupping Kakashi’s face with his other hand. Kakashi stood and followed him without a word.

* * *

Iruka woke slowly, pleased to feel Kakashi warm against his side. For a few minutes, he was content to stay curled up in bed, listening to Kakashi breathe in synch with him, warm beneath the heavy blankets. Eventually he rolled over and propped himself up on his elbows, hair falling in his face as he looked over at Kakashi.

“Morning,” Iruka said – Kakashi always woke before him. Today, Kakashi was still lying flat on his back, and just turned his head when Iruka spoke.

“Mmm,’ he replied. “Morning.” He closed his eye. “’n I stay a bit?”

“Of course,” Iruka said. “You don’t have to ask.” Iruka stayed where he was for a moment, just soaking in Kakashi beside him, an increasingly familiar sight in the mornings. Kakashi opened an eye and blinked at him, looking like he was only barely awake.

“Something on my face?” he asked.

Iruka ducked his head. “Just looking.” He rolled over to get up, tucking the covers next to Kakashi to keep as much heat in as possible – Iruka kept the temperature in his apartment fairly low at night, and Kakashi got cold more quickly than he did. “I’m going to get breakfast,” he said. “You hungry?” 

Iruka caught the tail end of a mumble – apparently not. He touched Kakashi on the shoulder, softly, sweeping hair out of his face – without the hitae-ate, Kakashi’s hair fell _everywhere_ , and ducked out of the room, leaving the door cracked. He ate, then sat down to his lesson plans, getting caught up on the work he had planned to do last night. When Iruka looked up, almost two hours had passed, and he hadn’t heard a thing from the bedroom. He frowned: it was unlike Kakashi to sleep so late. Iruka got up and walked over to the door, careful to step audibly: Kakashi was unpredictable when woken unexpectedly.

When Iruka walked into the bedroom, Kakashi was still flat on his back, blankets pulled up to his nose. He might have been muttering something, though it looked like he was still asleep. Iruka got a glass of water and bottle of painkillers; when he went back into the bedroom, Kakashi was speaking incoherently in his sleep. Iruka caught “-bito” and then, a few mumbled words later, “sensei-“ and hurried to put the glass and bottle down on the bedside table, feeling as if he were intruding.

Iruka knew that the Yondaime had been Kakashi’s teacher, but little more than that. He didn’t quite dare ask, and Kakashi volunteered hardly anything about the war. Iruka went back to work in the other room. Kakashi would take the pills when he woke up, and the sound would let Iruka know he was up and about.

When Iruka heard the pills rattle a little later, the sound was followed quickly by the clatter of the bottle hitting the floor and rolling. Kakashi cursed softly, but Iruka didn’t hear him pick it up. He finished the page he was working on and then wandered into the bedroom. Kakashi was sitting up halfway, leaning against the wall, glass of water held up against his forehead. The painkillers seemed to have rolled under the bed.

“Morning,” Iruka said, dropping to his knees to fish the bottle out, making a note to sweep later: the dust bunnies were breeding again. “How many?”

Kakashi put down the water glass, took the bottle from him, and, opening it one-handed, poured out six. Iruka raised an eyebrow – the usual dose was two; he often only took one. He sat on the bed next to Kakashi and re-capped the bottle.

“How’s your leg?” he asked. Kakashi gave him a disbelieving look.

“I’ve been worse,” Kakashi answered, swallowing the pills dry and then picking up the glass to take a long drink of water. Iruka knew an evasion when he heard one, and made an _answer the question_ face at him. Kakashi ignored him.

“Could I have some more water?” he asked, holding the glass against one cheek. The glass was still half-full. Iruka narrowed his eyes: Kakashi looked almost feverish. But even when he’d had the flu, Iruka hadn’t seen him act quite like this.

“Kakashi,” he said slowly, wondering if he was pushing too hard, presuming too much, “why don’t I take a look at your leg.” It wasn’t a question.

Kakashi glared at him half-heartedly, but when Iruka pulled at the loose waistband of his pants, he allowed them to be stripped off. The bandage had bled through, rippled rust-colored lines indicating that it had either opened several times, or oozed over the course of the night. When Iruka laid his hand on the skin of Kakashi’s thigh just above the bandages, it was warmer than it ought to have been, and slightly flushed.

Iruka considered how best to unwrap the bandages, but Kakashi just pulled a kunai from who-knows-where and sliced through them, grabbing the ends in one hand and yanking hard, pulling all but one or two strips off at once. Iruka removed the rest, pulling a little more slowly, then focused on the jagged cut. He drew in a sharp breath at the sight. The pieces of tape he’d applied the previous night were mostly intact, but several of the ones toward the middle had broken, and the flesh gaped open. The wound looked much deeper than it had last night. The edges of the cut weren’t red anymore: they were the whitish-cream of dead skin, shading into a dark purple, bruising fanning outwards from the edges for almost a hand’s-width. Kakashi made a non-committal noise and leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. Iruka realized, with a start, that Kakashi had had both eyes open, something he almost _never_ did.

“Kakashi,” Iruka said, knowing he was stating the obvious, but too surprised to keep quiet, “this is a lot worse than it was last night.”

Kakashi didn’t bother to look back down. “It’s better than I thought it would be,” he said. “Normally the edges go blacker than that.”

Iruka blinked. “ _Normally?_ Kakashi, this isn’t a normal reaction.” Kakashi started to shrug, then froze, raising his left hand to rub at his right shoulder and grimacing, clearly in pain.

“Mmm,” he said, “Iwa’s doctors do more offensive research than ours.” Iruka frowned at the seeming non sequitur: then he remembered something he’d be teaching his class in a few weeks and stared at Kakashi.

“They develop a lot more poisons than we do, you mean,” he said flatly. “And a lot of the ones they’re not supposed to use anymore are necrotic.” The thought made him catch his breath. “Kakashi, you _idiot_ , why didn’t you go to the hospital?” He saw Kakashi stiffen.

“This stuff isn’t that bad,” Kakashi said. “They mostly don’t use it since the war, but once you’ve been exposed it’s not really poisonous.” Iruka stifled the urge to shake Kakashi: it wouldn’t do any good.

“Let me get this straight,” Iruka said, and saw Kakashi wince a little bit at his tone. “You decided to skip the hospital and just come here despite several broken ribs, a dislocated collar bone and a wound in your thigh longer than my hand-span that definitely needs stitches and _is poisoned_.”

“You make it sound so _dramatic_ , Iruka-sensei” Kakashi drawled, opening an eye. “The collarbone isn’t dislocated anymore, and it’s a poison I’m mostly immune to by this point. It’s unlikely to manifest any of the more problematic side effects.” He moved as if to lie back down, and Iruka caught the nearly-hidden wince as Kakashi reached for the blankets.

“I can just sleep it off,” Kakashi said. “I usually did.”

Iruka ignored the part of him that was appalled at Kakashi’s matter-of-fact tone, as if letting a boy wait out a poisoning were _normal_. Instead, he closed his eyes and, to keep from yelling at an obviously sick man, listed the ten most common mistakes made by beginners when casting visual genjutsu.

Then he opened his eyes to look at Kakashi, who had lain back down, and gone alarmingly pale from the effort. Whatever Kakashi might say about his collarbone and leg, there were still his broken ribs to be dealt with.

The purpling skin around the wound on Kakashi’s leg looked even more unnatural against Kakashi’s sudden pallor. When Iruka laid his hand flat on Kakashi’s thigh, it was burning hot, and Kakashi jerked his leg away, gasping in pain and then yanking the sheets up over himself. Iruka could count on one hand the number of times he’d heard Kakashi involuntarily admit he was in pain, and made a decision, hoping he wouldn’t regret it later.

“All right,” Iruka said firmly, “that’s it. You need to have Tsunade take a look at that and get her approval to sleep it off.”

Kakashi glared at him from beneath the sheets. If the whole situation hadn’t been so bizarre, so fraught, Iruka might have found the look faintly adorable – like a disgruntled puppy, all ruffled hair and attitude. As it was, he just glared back.

“I don’t care if you’re ‘mostly’ immune,” he said, “there’s no good reason to mess around with poison, and you’re in no shape to argue, Kakashi. Come on, it won’t take that long.”

Of course, Kakashi tossed out objection after objection -- increasingly outlandish -- as Iruka re-bound his thigh and began to get him dressed. Things went more quickly after the third time Kakashi ‘accidentally’ put something on inside-out or backwards, or dropped it under the bed, because Iruka stopped being quite so gentle. Once he’d gotten Kakashi dressed reasonably warmly, shirt finally on straight and mask pulled up, Iruka pulled on his own jacket.

Then Kakashi refused to stand up. Iruka stared at him in disbelief. Kakashi looked right back, and crossed his arms. _I may be dressed_ , his posture yelled, _but I’m damned if I’ll make this easy for you._.

“What, do you think if you don’t get up, you won’t have to go?” Iruka asked, incredulous: his six-year-olds knew better than to pull that stunt. Kakashi smiled and looked altogether too pleased with himself.

“You can’t _make_ me go to the hospital, Iruka- _sensei_.”

He looked pleased with himself at this realization, and settled back against the wall with a little smile. Normally, Iruka knew, his chances of getting Kakashi to do anything he didn’t want to do were just below zero. But right now Kakashi was too hurt to sit up on his own, and Iruka was becoming increasingly certain that his eye wasn’t tracking properly, implying that something more was wrong than just the visible injuries. Iruka moved slightly to the left, testing, and Kakashi took an instant too long to adjust.

Iruka frowned at him.

“I’ll just have to say here,” Kakashi insisted, almost petulant. “And since you’re so worried, you can make me soup and hover and _overreact_ as much as you like.”

“Overreact?” Iruka said, in disbelief. “Kakashi-“

Kakashi made a show of burrowing back into bed, even though Iruka could see the movement must hurt. “Don’t like the hospital,” he said, voice muffled by a pillow. “’m staying right here.” Iruka frowned: this was not normal behavior, even for Kakashi, who pushed even Konoha’s rather flexible definitions of ‘normal.’

“Kakashi,” Iruka began, _nobody likes the hospital_ on the tip of his tongue. Kakashi pulled a pillow over his head, followed by the covers. The childishness of the gesture was not at all endearing: it made Iruka grit his teeth.

“You do _not_ want to do this, Kakashi.” Iruka said, sternly.

Most of his students knew better than to push Iruka once he’d reached this point: Naruto and Konohamaru were the only regular exceptions. The rest, no matter how stubborn or determined would back down once they’d pushed Iruka this far. Kakashi just peered out from under the pillow, smiled at him smugly and mock-yawned, sticking his tongue out at Iruka. Iruka stared in disbelief and decided that if Kakashi was going to act like a stubborn child, well, Iruka would treat him like one.

“Either you’re going to the hospital under your own power, Kakashi, or I’m carrying you there,” Iruka said, eyes narrowing, still half hoping he might convince Kakashi to go in on his own.

And then Kakashi made the mistake of laughing at him.

 

* * * * * *

Some forty minutes later, Iruka walked through the hospital’s front gates.

“Hello, Shizune-san,” Iruka said conversationally, as if he didn’t have _Hatake Kakashi_ pinned over his shoulders in a modified fireman’s carry. Kakashi, for his part, focused on looking bored by the whole thing, rather than resentful, in pain, or like he was being carried against his will.

Kakashi tried to turn to see Shizune, and his ribs protested: he gritted his teeth. This was going to be gossip fodder for weeks and Kakashi couldn’t decide whether to be grateful that even after the fight, Iruka had pulled Kakashi’s mask up before stepping outside, or resentful of him for being so damn pushy in the first place.

Shizune was silent for a moment. Kakashi caught himself trying to imagine the look on her face, and shook his head, frowning. Iruka cleared his throat, carefully adjusting Kakashi’s weight over his shoulders. Kakashi shifted with the motion but refused to speak up.

“Iruka-sensei,” Shizune managed. “Oh, right this way.” She nearly squeaked in surprise as Iruka turned and she caught sight of Kakashi’s face. “Kakashi-san!” she exclaimed, “I didn’t think you’d be awak-“ her hand flew to her mouth. “Well,” she said, eyes alive with curiosity, “right in here,”

Iruka followed her into a small single room and carefully lowered Kakashi onto the empty hospital bed, keeping a firm hand on Kakashi’s right shoulder when he had to release his leg. Sometimes you could tell he worked with pre-genin. Kakashi wondered if Iruka slung many of his students over his shoulders to bring them to the hospital.

Kakashi said nothing. If Iruka thought he needed to be here, Iruka could damn well deal with the medi-nin himself. It was petulant and childish, but Kakashi wasn’t about to start cooperating now.

There was an awkward silence.

“Thank you, Shizune-san,” Iruka said finally, when it became clear that Kakashi was really not going to cooperate in any way. “Kakashi-san” (Kakashi winced at the formality) “has broken ribs, a recently dislocated and inexpertly re-set collarbone, and an infected and poisoned thigh wound. He’s also running a fever, and his eyes don’t seem to be tracking properly.”

Kakashi noticed that Iruka didn’t mention his own rather spectacular black eye, or the bruises Kakashi had given him, scattered across his arms and torso. Kakashi had not come willingly, and Iruka had had to roll with a couple of blows that Kakashi hadn’t quite been able to pull. Kakashi’s better judgment had pointed out that his not being able to pull a punch was definitely a sign something was wrong -- and that Iruka was likely right. He’d ignored it, though he had also put up less of a fight after that. Comparatively.

Shizune was asking Iruka a series of questions: Kakashi ignored the two of them. Even if he had wanted to protest his health, he was in no condition to do so, considering the scattered drops of blood he had shed on the way to the hospital. Kakashi had kicked out the third time Iruka tried to pick him up, and Iruka had stabbed his fingers into Kakashi’s injured leg, _hard_. If he hadn’t been so busy not-screaming in pain, Kakashi would have been pretty impressed: Iruka fought _dirty_.

It had been a long walk from Iruka’s apartment to the hospital, and when Kakashi had tried to get away once, Iruka had jabbed his leg again, hard.

Shizune nodded in response to something Iruka had told her, and glanced from Kakashi’s shoulder to his ribs, and down to his leg – it was clear even through the blacks which leg was injured. She checked the state of his collarbone and ribs, and held a hand glowing with chakra over his leg, before nodding at Iruka, turning on her heel, and walking out at a fast clip. She ignored Kakashi as if he were a pre-genin, a child. (Part of him pointed out that he _was_ acting like a child, irrational and headstrong and stubborn. He ignored it, and watched the door slide shut after her.)

As soon as Shizune was out of earshot, Kakashi turned on Iruka, furious. But before he could open his mouth, Iruka said:

“Kakashi. I just _carried_ you here. If _I_ can carry you here, against your will – if I can drag you _anywhere_ you don’t want to go – you know as well as I do that something’s wrong.”

His tone was calm, authoritative and absolutely unflinching: he met Kakashi’s glare head-on.

Kakashi opened his mouth and found he had no response. He shut his mouth - lips pinched shut in displeasure – and leaned back into the hospital bed, away from Iruka. Iruka, seemingly calm, just hooked an ankle around a chair leg and pulled it over so he could sit down by Kakashi’s bedside. It looked like he was planning on staying.

They didn’t often – or really, ever – talk about the difference in their ranks: it was just a fact, like their different elemental alignments, or different physical builds. For Iruka to bring it up – to so blatantly admit that Kakashi could easily overpower him – was unprecedented. After a few minutes of silence, Iruka sighed.

“Look,” he offered, and Kakashi glanced over at him. “I know you’re pissed off, and I’m sorry about that.” He paused for a moment, and Kakashi waited to see what form the rest of the apology would take. Iruka surprised him. “But you _do_ need to be here.”

Kakashi didn’t reply, just closed his eye, turned his head away, and sat completely still, shoulders stiff.

 _You lock out the world when you do that_ , Minato-sensei had said once, after seeing Kakashi close his eye and turn his face away from Rin, refusing to listen to her.

 _I know I do, sensei_ , he had not replied at the time, _that’s the point._.

Now, Kakashi could almost feel Iruka’s concern and worry and frustration bubbling away beside him, and it made him feel anxious and almost suffocated. He tried not to remember the worry in Iruka’s voice last night, or this morning: it was easier to be angry with Iruka than to remember when the last time anyone had worried about him like that was. _But that was years ago,_ he thought, _and besides, the girl is dead_ , a line from a book long forgotten.

Kakashi had seen too many people, civilian and shinobi alike, break when a loved one died, falling into jagged pieces of their former selves. He had sworn not to do that to anyone when he died. But feeling Iruka next to him, chakra roiling and upset, Kakashi was suddenly certain that he’d failed.

* * *

Iruka stood when Tsunade stormed in, Shizune and Sakura at her heels. Kakashi reached out and grabbed his wrist, yanking Iruka back into his seat. If Kakashi was going to be in here with them, Iruka was damn well staying, too. He stubbornly ignored how much attention he’d had to put into catching Iruka’s wrist: it was clear to him by now that something was wrong. That didn’t mean he had to advertise it.

Tsunade caught sight of him, and Iruka in the chair next to him. She started muttering under her breath, and although Kakashi couldn’t hear her distinctly, he thought he knew what she was saying. He was fairly certain she’d given _Naruto_ this same dressing-down when he’d come back from the Valley of the End, and he knew he’d received it a number of times himself: after the encounter with Itachi, most recently, after the occasional ANBU mission, years ago, and even during the war. It was familiar, almost reassuring, by now. He focused on her movements, blocking everything else out.

It did take a good deal of concentration to keep from flinching: Tsunade wasn’t the least bit delicate when she jabbed a needle into his inner arm to take blood samples. _She must be worried,_ Kakashi thought, _she’s usually a lot less rough than this_. Shizune handed her test tubes in seemingly never-ending succession, and then finally left with a tray of red vials and samples swabbed from his mouth, his leg, and the corners of his eyes – both of them. Kakashi noticed Iruka stiffen, as if to protest, when Shizune swabbed at his eyes, and tightened his grip on Iruka’s wrist in warning: he knew better than to tell a medi-nin how to do her job. She’d be hurrying to the lab, Kakashi knew, to test and run chemical samples, and figure out the exact nature of the poison. He could have just _told_ her which of Iwa’s poisons it was, but she’d figure it out soon enough on her own. He knew she enjoyed the process of testing.

Kakashi watched through a half-lidded eye as Sakura pulled supplies a moment before Tsunade asked for them, a step ahead of the requests. She had certainly grown, he thought: he couldn’t imagine the star-struck girl he’d tested nearly three years ago handling this level of responsibility without freezing up. But Sakura moved easily in the hospital, frowning in concentration and occasionally making a comment to her teacher, helping to set up the IV stand, testing the needle and tearing off strips of tape for Tsunade without being asked.

 _You should be proud of yourself, Sakura_ , he thought, passingly. _You’ve found your place._

Tsunade removed the remaining strips of tape from Kakashi’s leg in a series of swift tugs: he refused to wince, though it did hurt: that tape held _tight_ to the skin. When Tsunade held her hand back, Sakura took the pieces of tape, handed over cotton swabs and gauze, then paused.

“Iodine,” Tsunade prompted. Kakashi blinked: that was unusual.

“Iodine?” Sakura said, “but doesn’t that delay healing?” and Kakashi saw Tsunade’s lips quirk up in satisfaction: a good pupil, indeed. But then, Sakura had always been good at memorization and had fine chakra control. Perhaps he should have seen earlier how good a fit this would be for her.

“Only mildly,” Tsunade replied, “but you’re right – so we don’t use it often. But in this case, when we don’t know what may have been introduced, it’s the most efficient way to kill almost everything that might cause infection. We alleviate the healing delay with a little chakra use – it’s very fine-scale tweaking. You could use the practice.” A smile flashed across Sakura’s face at the implied compliment.

The two of them moved in concert around the bed. At a gesture, Sakura placed a tray within Tsunade’s reach, with gauze and cotton swabs lined up in neat rows, and an empty space for discarded ones. Then she went around the bed to hold glowing hands to Kakashi’s chest, closing her eyes and breathing slowly, fingers moving very slightly as she knit bone and sinew back together.

Kakashi closed his eye and let the two of them work. The alleviation of pain from his shoulder and ribs didn’t leave him any more clear-headed – as it often did – and he frowned slightly, taking stock of his condition. Tsunade cleaned out the gash on his leg quickly and efficiently – and painfully. Sakura didn’t heal his ribs entirely, leaving some bone un-knit, but less bruised. But when she held her hands to his shoulder, she soothed nearly all the inflammation, allowing him to relax from the artificially stiff posture he’d had to adopt to keep it from pulling and causing constant pain.

A few moments after she stopped, he opened his eye again, and saw her at Tsunade’s side, handling supplies as if she had never moved away. They worked together like clockwork, movements tiny and precise. Iruka sat still through it all, watching from the chair he’d moved out of their way as Shizune departed.

Finally Tsunade laid a layer of gauze over the gash in his leg, holding it in place with tape.

“That’s it until we find out what they hit you with, kid,” Tsunade said, her voice not unkind. “Once Shizune has figured out what it was, we’ll be back – until then you’re not to get up. I’m sure Iruka-sensei will be good enough to keep you company.”

Kakashi could practically feel the breeze as Iruka whipped his head around to stare at her in surprise. Tsunade smiled at him before shooing Sakura out of the room and shutting the door behind them. Iruka sighed, and when Kakashi glanced over out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that no one had treated Iruka’s black eye yet.

Iruka looked over at Kakashi, who looked away. It seemed Iruka wouldn’t be going anywhere. Kakashi wondered if Iruka thought he’d try to leave if left here on his own. He might have a reputation for being a terrible patient, but once he was in the hospital, he wasn’t stupid enough to ignore his doctors, or to leave before they said he could. If that meant he was a pain in everyone’s ass from boredom when he ran out of reading material, well, he could hardly be blamed for wanting something to do with the vast stretches of time.

Kakashi firmly ignored the part of him that was fiercely, possessively pleased that Iruka was staying, closed his eye, and settled in for a long wait.

 

* * * * * *

 

Whatever they’d put in the IV bag must have had some kind of sedative in it, because when Iruka stood to stretch his legs, Kakashi didn’t stir. Asleep, Kakashi always looked younger, and Iruka felt a wave of affection, (albeit slightly tempered by worry and frustration) for the stubborn bastard. Kakashi seemed smaller in the hospital bed, more human, more fragile. Iruka shook his head, stretched, absently prodded the swelling around his left eye, and then sat cross-legged on the floor by Kakashi’s bed – the hospital chairs were really dreadful. In his less charitable moments, visiting students or friends, Iruka had begun to half suspect that the chairs were intentionally horrible, to discourage visitors from staying and getting in the way, and to induce patients to stay in their beds.

Iruka rested his head against the wall, and tried not to worry about Kakashi, even though he was pretty sure Tsunade was actually concerned, not just annoyed. Iruka closed his eyes and very deliberately started outlining next week’s homework assignments in his head, wishing he’d thought to bring a pad of paper or a book with him. Not that he’d had the chance: it had been all he could do just to get Kakashi here. He hadn’t really had the time to worry about what he’d do once they got to the hospital, especially once he realized Kakashi wasn’t pulling his punches. Iruka touched his eye lightly, and wondered if it was worth finding a nurse; he decided against it.

At least Kakashi was asleep, or feigning sleep: Iruka didn’t know that he could take much more of the chilly silence Kakashi had treated him to on the way from his apartment to the hospital. Iruka sighed, watched Kakashi breathe slowly, and went back to distracting himself, trying to focus on how much time to devote to basic theoretical chakra pathway diagramming, and whether he’d add practical demonstrations this week or the next. It didn’t work very well, but it occupied a stretch of time.

Shizune bolted suddenly into the room. Having grown accustomed to the quiet, Iruka was completely unprepared for the sudden eruption of motion and noise that followed her: Sakura and two other medi-nin were hot on her heels. They lifted Kakashi onto a gurney and whisked him out of the room in a blur of serious faces and hospital scrubs. Iruka stared after them, then at the now-empty bed, and climbed slowly to his feet, still a little stiff.

 _Well_ , he thought inanely – clutching at any thought that wasn’t pure, blind panic - _at least the benches outside the operating room are more comfortable than this floor_. There wasn’t really anywhere else they could be taking Kakashi so quickly. Iruka knew the operating room was only ever used for cases serious enough to need several skilled medi-nin in addition to Tsunade: it was not a reassuring sign at all. Iruka shook his head and tried not to imagine all the things that could be going wrong right now with him none the wiser. He couldn’t even remember now if Kakashi had been breathing when they snatched him away, though surely he would have noticed if Kakashi hadn’t been?

Iruka walked slowly to the door, and headed for the operating room. When he got there, he sat on one of the benches lining the hall, staring at the lighted sign above the door, and waited, making lists to keep from panicking, running through the names of all the students he’d taught, their strengths and weaknesses, their current ranks. That led him to worrying about Naruto. Eventually, he laid down and counted off the minutes by his heartbeat, feeling the clock tick through a half hour, an hour. Iruka shook his head: he didn’t usually have this much trouble focusing.

Once he reached the two-hour mark, he begged a pad of paper from one of the medi-nin passing by, and begun outlining classes: anything to keep him from imagining what was happening behind those doors.

It was a long time before anyone came out through the double doors, though several people scurried in. Sakura was the first to exit. She saw him and stopped.

“Iruka-sensei!” Sakura’s hair was slicked back with sweat, and escaping strands straggled into her face. She looked exhausted.

Iruka nodded, looking up from the pad of paper in his lap. He now had his class’s lessons planned to the minute for the next four weeks, and an outline of several proposed changes to the Academy’s teaching schedule and graduation requirements. It hadn’t kept his mind off Kakashi.

“Has anyone told you wh-“ she started to say.

“No.” he interrupted her – she looked surprised for a moment – “not since you ran in and grabbed him.” He was distantly glad to hear that his voice didn’t quaver, that he sounded worried but not as though he’d been chewing his lower lip bloody or freezing in place every few minutes, imagining a medi-nin coming out and announcing the worst. He realized Sakura was still speaking.

“- take some time to be sure, but there’s only a small chance. Thank you for bringing him in, Iruka-sensei.” She took a breath and sat next to him. “Much longer,” she said, looking down at her hands, which were shaking – Iruka reached out and folded them into his own, offering what comfort he could without even thinking about it. “Very much longer,” Sakura continued, “and we might not have been able to reverse all the damage.”

Iruka tried not to shiver at the implications of that statement, to focus instead on the steely determination behind it, that backbone of steel that Sakura seemed to have gained in the last couple of years, so much like Naruto’s stubborn, tangible _belief_.

“Thank you for your hard work, Sakura-chan,” he said quietly. He stood, pulling her up with him. “Now,” he said, “it looks like you could use some sleep.” He urged her down the hallway. She smiled at him, and went off in the direction of the cafeteria. Iruka half-hoped she would go home, but he supposed that was unlikely.

Iruka sat back down on the bench, and began outlining plans for teaching fuma shuriken to his kids. It was an exercise in absurdity –at this age, the shuriken were nearly as large as they were – but it kept him occupied, a bit. So when Tsunade came out a short time later, he was able to look up questioningly, instead of jumping to his feet and demanding to be let in to see Kakashi _immediately_.

“Hokage-sama,” he said, standing quickly. Tsunade looked tired and drawn in the harsh hospital lighting, her cheeks paler than usual.

“Iruka-sensei.” She nodded, and gestured for him to follow her: Iruka felt his stomach flip. He went withher into the small office she’d appropriated when she returned to Konoha, and took a seat facing the desk – he was surprised when she sat next to him.

“Kakashi will be all right.” Tsunade said first. Iruka nearly closed his eyes in relief.

“You did the right thing, bringing him in,” she continued. “He was half right: it was poison. And the poison he told you about is of comparatively little concern: he’s practically immune.” Iruka waited for the bad news. “But,” Tsunade said, turning to face him more directly “there was a second poison. It had already started working in his nervous system.” She paused. “Did he seem any different when you brought him in?”

Iruka nodded. “Less coordinated,” he said, recalling the way Kakashi’s open-palmed blow had struck him over the eye, instead of dead on the chin, failing to knock him over, “and a little petulant, almost childish.”

“That would be the physical and cognitive side-effects,” Tsunade said. “It wasn’t advanced enough to tell how far those might have gone. If he’d come in tomorrow, well,” she paused, “as it was, we were able to reverse the damage.” She looked over at him, and Iruka saw his Hokage, saw the world’s best doctor and saw for the first time a woman old enough to be Kakashi’s mother. Even if she’d never admit it, her gaze was terrible for a moment.

“He’s sleeping right now,” she said, standing. “He’ll be under for several hours. You should go home and get dinner, maybe try to get some rest.”

Iruka nodded, though he had no intention of going anywhere. Tsunade sighed, and then smiled at him. He thought she might even look faintly approving, under all the tiredness.

“They’ll take him to the usual room,” Tsunade said, and gestured for Iruka to leave. When he got to the ‘usual’ room Kakashi was already there, eyes closed. Iruka noticed absently that the chair by the bedside wasn’t one of the usual ones. He sat down (this one was more comfortable) and watched Kakashi sleep. Iruka folded his arms on the edge of Kakashi’s bed and rested his head on them, just for a minute.

* * *

Iruka woke some time later, when Shizune put a hand on his shoulder, offering him a cup of tea. He smiled and sat up to take it. When he looked over, he saw that Kakashi was still asleep.

“How is he?” he asked, voice low, sipping at the tea and sputtering a little at its heat. A blanket fell from his shoulders to the back of the chair.

“Still asleep,” she said. “You could really go home, Iruka-sensei. We can call you when he wakes up.”

“No,” he said, “thank you, Shizune-san, but I think I’d rather stay here.” She smiled at him, and picked the blanket up, folding it and placing it on the back of his chair.

“I expected as much,” she said softly. She paused for a moment, visibly weighing words. “He probably wouldn’t tell you this,” she said finally, “but I think you deserve to know. It’s been more than ten years since anyone waited like this for him.”

Shizune smiled widely at him and left, closing the door softly behind her. Iruka stared vaguely after her and then sat back in his chair, pulling the blanket into his lap and clutching at fistfuls of it in worry. He tried not to imagine ten years of waking up alone in the hospital and failed entirely.

Kakashi breathed slowly, evenly, and Iruka watched him as if attention could bring him back, could wake him up from this chakra-depleted sleep, could make him forgive Iruka for being right.

Eventually, Iruka put his head down on his arms again, closing his eyes. Maybe the wait wouldn’t be so bad if he could sleep some of it away? ... by the time he’d finished the thought, he was asleep again, pulled down by exhaustion and worry.

 

* * * * * *

Kakashi woke in a familiar hospital room, though not the one he remembered falling asleep in. He felt drained in a way that spoke of chakra fatigue or recovery from long illness, and had a faint memory of harried voices above him and foreign chakra prickling through his body. He was half-reclining, the bed raised slightly to support him. It looked like early evening, judging by the light filtering into the room. But when he turned his head to look out the window, the world spun unpleasantly around him. He looked down in front of himself instead.

Iruka was asleep on the edge of his bed, unbound hair spilling over the sheets. Even asleep, he looked worried, frustrated, exhausted. Kakashi’s fingers itched to sweep the hair out of Iruka’s face, see him smile the way he always did on waking up. He placed both hands in his lap instead, one on top of the other, and looked away.

There was an IV in his left arm, hooked up to the tail end of a dose of mild sedative – Kakashi fingered the line, considered pulling the needle out. Ultimately, he left it alone, as he always did: most of why Tsunade called him a bad patient, he thought, was his return rate. Or maybe it was the fact that Jiraya visited him from time to time, (more often, recently) and harassed her during his visits.

The wait until a medi-nin noticed Kakashi was awake seemed all the longer for the knowledge that if he just reached out, he could wake Iruka up instead of sitting solitary in the fading light of day.

* * *

“Kakashi,” Tsunade said softly from the doorway, “you’re looking better.”

He moved slowly to face her: she looked exhausted. The chakra mark on her forehead was gone: its absence gave her face an oddly unbalanced look. It reminded him of how she’d looked when he was a child, before the sannin had left Konoha, back when they were three of Konoha’s handful of legendary protectors. He pushed the thought away before his father’s image could swim up too far in his mind – Konoha’s White Fang – dead nearly twenty years, now.

“You’re not,” he replied, voice cracking. His mouth tasted cottony and dry. Tsunade didn’t yell or frown, didn’t even quirk a half-smile at him. She was definitely exhausted. Kakashi looked questioningly at her, and Tsunade stepped in and closed the door behind her, moving to stand by his bedside, opposite Iruka. When he tried to turn farther to face her, his ribs, still not fully healed, protested.

“We had to keep you under for several hours while we were working on you,” she said, very quietly. “It much longer than expected to fight back the effects of the second poison.”

“Second poison?” he asked, keeping his voice low. It wasn’t really a surprise. In some ways, it was a relief to know he hadn’t been imagining the differences in effect from the poison he knew.

“A neurotoxin,” Tsunade replied, voice low, “It entered the bloodstream and moved into your nervous system, where it started damaging nerve endings, from the outermost inwards. It wouldn’t have had any immediate side effects at the time of injury, as it had very few physical symptoms. But given enough time, it would have destroyed your nervous system.” She looked straight at him, eyes hard: he refused to look away. It had been stupid not to come in: he knew that. Stubbornness and a childish desire to out-medic a schoolteacher were no reason; wanting to just rest at home was equally foolish. Tsunade cleared her throat.

“You lost some feeling in your hands and feet first,” she stated. “Then it started to affect your overall coordination. Speech would have been affected next. Not long after that, you would have lost all feeling to your extremities. Shortly after that it would have been fatal. If you’d come in any later, we might not have caught it in time to reverse all the damage it caused. We nearly weren’t able to as it was.” Tsunade’s tone was flat: the same _bad news you have to hear_ voice Kakashi had heard Iruka use once or twice with recalcitrant students. Kakashi refused to flinch, looking her square in the eye.

Tsunade didn’t need to tell him how disastrous even the non-fatal effects would have been: throwing shuriken or kunai with any accuracy would be difficult; forming signs with numbed hands nigh-impossible. Tsunade shifted, and looked out the window, as if she half-expected to see Jiraya crouched out there.

“It had cognitive side-effects as well,” she said, “almost certainly intended to damage your judgment, but since we healed you before anything had a chance to stick, we can’t be sure how far that had progressed.”

“We’ll need to keep you for another day or so to work on your feet a bit more.” She paused, and her voice softened, just a little, still quiet. “Sakura has been pushing herself hard. She’s been very worried about her sensei.”

He nodded once, then held his head still: the room had started swimming alarmingly at that motion. Neither of them spoke for a moment, Iruka’s steady breathing the loudest sound in the room.

“Kakashi,” Tsunade finally said, “you were lucky this time. And you are more often than not, when it comes down to it. But you can’t depend on that.”

He blinked agreement, holding his head still. He might not have the world’s best luck, but he certainly didn’t have the worst: that was Tsunade’s dubious honor. Still, she was right: everyone’s luck ran out at some point. Pushing it unnecessarily wasn’t a smart thing to do. And, usually, Kakashi didn’t – especially not this needlessly. That alone would be sign enough -- or should have been sign enough -- to bring him in. And Iruka had noticed before Kakashi.

There was another brief silence. Tsunade shifted, and walked to the door.

“Kakashi,” she said, hand paused above the door handle, looking back at Iruka, who was somehow still asleep. “He sat outside the operating room for nearly five hours, before we were done with you.” She left, shutting the door quietly behind her.

Kakashi looked down at Iruka, and thought about the implications of that. The last person to wait by his bedside had been Rin, long years ago. He blinked both eyes, feeling them water slightly.

 _Why are you here?_ he thought at Iruka. _Why are you still here?_.

 

* * * * * *

 

Iruka woke when a medi-nin opened the door to check on Kakashi, and sat up slowly, working the kinks out of his neck and shoulders as best he could. Kakashi seemed to be sleeping a little easier, now, though he couldn’t be certain: Kakashi asleep could be almost as much of a puzzle as Kakashi awake. Iruka padded over to the doorway to check the clock in the hall, and closed the door slowly, expecting Kakashi to wake, surprised when he did not. It was nearly one in the morning, which meant Kakashi might have been unconscious for more than twelve hours, unless he’d woken while Iruka slept.

It felt like several hours before Kakashi woke up. Iruka had gotten himself more tea twice, and used the restroom once, each time worrying that Kakashi would wake while he was away. In between, Iruka sat in his chair and tried not to imagine what Kakashi would say when he woke up. When he did wake, Kakashi didn’t stir, move around restlessly, or sit up straighter: just opened one eye and looked around the room quickly, hardly moving at all.

“Oh, thank-“ Iruka said, too relieved to worry about how Kakashi might respond. “They were starting to worry.”

 _He’d_ actually been worrying the whole time, but he didn’t see any need to say that out loud: he was sure Kakashi could tell. Iruka knew he was an open book, and he usually didn’t mind, but right now, looking at Kakashi’s carefully blank face above his mask he almost resented the inequality, how hard Kakashi could be to read.

Kakashi stared for a long moment, and said nothing in response. Iruka just looked at him, how drained and pale he still looked under the hospital sheets, how fragile he appeared, even awake. Kakashi was always paler than Iruka, but right now the contrast between them was night and day – or it might have been, if Iruka could have worked up the courage to take Kakashi’s hand. He knew better than to touch Kakashi unexpectedly: even now, there were times when Kakashi had to stop an instinctive blow if Iruka forgot, and touched the back of his neck walking past, or tapped him on the shoulder when he said something obscene. But if he were being honest with himself, Iruka knew, he wasn’t taking Kakashi’s hand because he worried Kakashi would pull away, not out of any trivial fear of injury.

“Sakura told me there were two poisons,” Iruka offered, after a moment of silence. Kakashi didn’t respond. Iruka continued anyway, feeling a little reckless in his relief.

“One was the one you identified,” Iruka continued, “The other one was new. It started frying your nerve endings a few hours after you got hit.” Kakashi didn’t so much as blink, giving no physical sign he was listening, but Iruka knew he had Kakashi’s full attention. “Tsunade, Shizune and Sakura all worked hard to reverse all the damage in your hands.”

Kakashi closed his eye when Iruka mentioned Sakura, but still said nothing. He could almost have been dead, but for the slight rise and fall of his chest. Iruka waited for a response, but it was as if Kakashi couldn’t hear him at all, as if Iruka weren’t there. As if Kakashi didn’t care how much work had gone into making sure he recovered from something that need not have happened in the first place. Iruka felt the worry and fear inside him flaring up, and tamped it down fiercely.

“You must have noticed,” Iruka said, tone carefully blank: not pitying, not accusing, just stating a fact, keeping calm. Trying to keep calm. “How uncoordinated it was making you?”

Kakashi just looked away, towards the window, turning his blind side to Iruka, leaving him no expression, just cloth.

“What were you thinking?” Iruka demanded, frustrated at Kakashi’s complete lack of response. Anger bubbled up within him, replacing worry and fear. “What was so damn important that you’d ignore being _poisoned_? You’re not that stubborn, or that proud, and you’re definitely not that stupid. What could be worth that?”

Kakashi shifted, but didn’t respond, head still turned away.

“God damn it, Kakashi,” Iruka said, louder, fiercer, “you could have _died_.” And Kakashi turned to look at him at that outburst, his face hard and unfamiliar.

“That’s nothing new.” His tone was as flat as Iruka’s had been. And Kakashi was right: they were none of them safe, and he perhaps least of all. But this was different from dying on a mission or in defense of village or loved ones.

“Of nothing but stupidity and _stubbornness!_ Iruka heard his voice break, and watched as Kakashi’s expression flickered, just for an instant, before closing up again, locking him out. “Don’t you ever think what that might mean for the people around you? Why would you do that?”

“Konoha has other shinobi,” Kakashi said, voice cold. “I’m not irreplaceable, Iruka. I can’t be.”

“I –“ Iruka snapped his mouth shut.

 _But I don’t_ , Iruka thought, _and you are._. The realization curled outwards from his fear and anger and distress. _That’s what I meant: I couldn’t possibly replace him, not now, not anymore._

 _Oh,_ , Iruka thought, _I didn’t realize I’d let him in so close_. But he had, and he couldn’t very well change that now. At some point, he’d thrown himself in for the long haul. And that meant he’d already made this decision too.

Kakashi was watching him intently, face stone-still. Iruka wondered what he saw there, painted across Iruka’s face.

Iruka took a deep breath, and looked Kakashi dead in the eye, waiting until he knew he had Kakashi’s full attention. Kakashi seemed to want to look away from his face, shying from the bruising across the side of Iruka’s face: Iruka didn’t let him.

 _Let’s try this from a different angle,_ Iruka thought. Either this would get through to Kakashi, or it would blow up in Iruka’s face spectacularly. Hopefully the former.

“We’re not having that fight again, Kakashi.” Iruka said, thinking, _We have to figure this out_. He saw Kakashi’s eye widen very slightly in surprise.

“You’re not a child.” Iruka continued, “I’m not a medi-nin. I can’t evaluate when you need professional medical attention the way a medic can.” He took a breath. “And I am certainly not going to wait until you’re in such bad shape that I can drag you to the hospital again. I can’t do that.” He’d thought about saying _I won’t do that_ , but this was truer, he thought.

Iruka didn’t have to remind Kakashi how this morning had gone, he was sure. Or to spell out for him what would happen if Iruka mis-judged someday, if Kakashi _really_ fought him while ill and just that little bit out of control. There were good reasons for having jounin-ranked medi-nin, after all, and Iruka was neither.

Kakashi looked away first. He was silent for a long moment, and Iruka waited, heart in his mouth.

“I never asked you to,” Kakashi finally said, voice cold and hard. “You took it upon yourself without so much as asking.”

Iruka felt like he’d just been hit in the gut, totally winded. Kakashi looked out the window again, his blind side turned to Iruka again.

“What the hell, Kakashi!” Iruka yelled, standing, “what do you expect me to do, just leave you to die in my bed? You don’t get to do that to me. I’m not going to have you on my conscience, damn it!” Distantly, irrelevantly, Iruka hoped that hadn’t been audible in the hallway. There was a moment of silence, and Iruka worked on slowing his breathing, calming his temper a little bit. Finally, Kakashi replied.

“So don’t,” he said, waving at the door. Iruka stared at him in disbelief.

“You –“ he said, at a loss for words.

“I never asked you for anything,” Kakashi said, gesturing at the room, the two of them. “You’re better off without me, if you hate this so much.”

“Fine,” Iruka bit off, “have it your way.”

He whirled on one heel and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He made it halfway down the hallway before finding an empty room and locking himself in, hand pressed to his mouth. He felt tears threaten and blinked them back fiercely, breathing as steadily as he could manage. He wanted to go back and apologize; he wanted Kakashi to admit how stupidly bull-headed he was being; he wanted Kakashi not to have said those things, not in such a cold, emotionless voice.

Instead, Iruka let himself slide down the door until he was sitting, and started reviewing the Shinobi Code, recalling and interjecting all the little editorial comments he’d heard from the Sandaime, from Tsunade, from his teachers and parents, all the modifications that allowed the Will of Fire to co-exist with the Code.

 _Love is a weakness_ , he thought _but it’s also what keeps Konoha a village instead of warring clans_. He closed his eyes and let tears roll down his cheeks.

 

* * * * * *

 

Kakashi stared after Iruka, words echoing in his head -- _We’re not having this fight again!_ He had expected Iruka to storm out: he had calculated his words to just that end, to push Iruka away before he left of his own accord.

He just hadn’t expected it to hurt so much when it worked.

Kakashi closed his eyes, but Iruka’s voice rang in his head, as clear as if he were still in the room. Even with Iruka gone, he was having their argument with himself, with no one to scare away or push aside.

 _You could have died,_ Iruka had said, and _\--what that might mean for the people around you?_.

He could always die on a mission: that chance existed for all of them. And Kakashi had been going out on A and S and ANBU-ranked missions these last few years, alone more often than not. He thought Tsunade might lay odds on him reaching 30; even she probably wouldn’t bet on him seeing the far side of 35, not with the Akatsuki on the move, and more and more likely to target Konoha because of Naruto and the Kyuubi.

But somehow that kind of risk didn’t seem to make a difference to Iruka. He never asked Kakashi to make impossible promises: just said “Go, and come back,” and smiled wide when Kakashi did. Iruka didn’t ask Kakashi to take easier missions, or to take just a _few_ days off; when Kakashi was away for a holiday, (or for Iruka’s birthday), he took it in stride. Iruka never asked the impossible, never anything Kakashi couldn’t give easily.

In fact, Kakashi thought, looking back, Iruka hardly asked him for anything at all: he usually waited for Kakashi to offer, unless there was a problem that needed solving, something clear for him to untangle. For Iruka to have acted as he had this morning, as he had just now -- he must have been unbelievably worried about Kakashi.

 _I’m not irreplaceable_ , Kakashi thought wildly, echoing his earlier words. _I can’t be_. He’d been working by that metric for so long that challenging it made him feel almost sick. But he’d seen the flash on Iruka’s face, that moment of hurt.

Kakashi brought a hand to his forehead in consternation, then leaned back with both eyes closed, trying to find something to think about that wasn’t the look on Iruka’s face when Kakashi told him to leave; something other than the catch in Iruka’s breath as he almost slammed the door shut behind him.

 _He’ll be fine_ , Kakashi told himself. _This is better._ It didn’t help.

* * *

When he heard the door slide open some time later, Kakashi opened his eye: it was Shizune, followed closely by Tonton. She left the door open, walking over to Kakashi’s bedside with a tray of vials and IV tubing: more tests. Sakura stepped in the open door, smiled at him and then looked around the rest of the room.

There were two small teapots and two cups on the tray Sakura held. One of them smelled like green tea: the other less like tea than like the hospital’s hallways. Sakura walked up to the hospital bed and her tone was almost stern when she said “Kakashi-sensei, Tsunade-sama says you have to drink _yours_ , not Iruka-sensei’s, no matter what it tastes like.” She paused. “Where _is_ Iruka-sensei?”

“He’s not here,” Kakashi said flatly, his tone a clear dismissal. “You don’t have to leave his tea.”

Shizune paused in tying an elastic band around his upper arm before yanking it tight and tying it off.

Sakura looked confused, but placed both pots and both cups on the side table before pouring a cup of tea. Her tone when she spoke again was reassuring. “He didn’t just step out for a minute? The benches outside the operating room aren’t great, and these chairs aren’t very comfortable: he probably needed to stretch his legs.”

She handed him the cup, which Kakashi held cradled in both hands. He could feel the warmth make his palms and fingers prickle slightly, a sure sign of recently healed nerves. It was the hospital-hallway blend, he noted absently.

Kakashi wished Tsunade had sent a nurse or orderly he could have scared off, not Sakura and Shizune: that was probably exactly why she had sent these two. “He’s not coming back anytime soon.” He didn’t control his voice as well as he ought to have done: it sounded unhappy and almost a little bitter.

Shizune detached his IV from the stand and plugged in an empty vial, watching carefully as it began to fill with blood. “Sakura,” she said, “can you get me another length of the thin tubing?” Sakura made a face, but she left.

“Now,” Shizune said, once Sakura was gone, “why, exactly, did Iruka leave? Because last I saw, he wasn’t going anywhere unless there was a crowbar involved.”

“It’s not –“ _important_ , he was about to say, shutting his mouth abruptly. It was important. That was the problem. “It’s nothing you need to worry about,” he said finally.

“Kakashi, what _happened_?” He didn’t answer, and she continued taking blood samples until she had an even half-dozen lined up on the tray. Kakashi wondered whether Sakura would be back: Shizune probably wouldn’t speak like this if they had an audience. _Well_ , he thought, seeing Tonton sitting by her feet, _a human audience, at least_.

“Whatever you two fought about,” Shizune said, finally, “you should try to work it out. Iruka’s as loyal as one of your nin-dogs, but he’s not bound by contract. You can only push him so far.” Kakashi shook his head. “Think about it,” she said, before picking up the tray and turning. She made it to the door before Kakashi spoke.

“Shizune,” he said. When she looked up in surprise, he caught her eye. “Will you – that is, if you see Iruka-sensei. Do something for his eye. And –“ he paused for a moment, “his arms as well.” She nodded, and the line of her shoulders softened a very little bit.

“All right,” she said. She looked for a moment as if she wanted to say more, then shook her head and glanced down at Tonton. “Well?” she said, “go find Sakura and tell her.” Tonton walked over to the door and sat very precisely in front of it until Shizune had gathered her tray of samples and walked over to open the door for the two of them.

* * *

Kakashi sat still for a time after Shizune left, head in his hands, reviewing what Iruka had said over and over again, playing back the memories almost as though he’d captured them with the Sharingan.

Looking at it all again, he realized, Iruka’s refusal to fight over this again in the future wasn’t a dismissal, wasn’t the lead-in to pushing Kakashi away: it was an attempt to solve a problem.

It was like Iruka saying “I’ll just water the plants quickly and go back to mine” when Kakashi came back high-strung from a mission; it was like him asking “How many times have you stayed up all night because of this?” or saying plainly: “Next time just _tell_ me, all right?” It was Iruka attacking a problem head-on. And Kakashi had insulted him and shoved him away for his trouble.

Iruka’s words rung in his head: _What was so damn important that you’d ignore being _poisoned_? What could be worth that?_

It was a good question, for all Kakashi wanted to shy away from it. Because Iruka was right about how utterly stupid it might have been, how meaningless if Kakashi were crippled through pure stubbornness, after a run-of-the-mill mission, a meaningless fight.

Kakashi paused. Even looking back on it, his stubbornness this morning made no rational sense. But he hadn’t wanted to leave Iruka’s apartment: even having Iruka mad at him had seemed better than the prospect of going to the hospital alone.

And he hadn’t even considered going back to his own apartment the previous evening, not even on the way back with his team. He had been headed back to Konoha, to an apartment whose heat broke every so often and whose fridge always had leftovers in the back corners. He had been headed _home_.

Kakashi closed both of his eyes and sat very, very still.

 

* * * * *

 

Iruka opened his eyes when someone knocked on the door: a quick check of chakra revealed that it was Sakura.

“Iruka-sensei?” she called softly, “would you open the door?” Iruka stood and briefly considered trying to reduce the redness of his eyes, but he knew better than to muck around with medical jutsu when he couldn’t concentrate fully. And Sakura was probably accustomed to looking past puffy red eyes by now. He hoped.

“I’m sorry, Sakura-chan.” Iruka unlocked and opened the door, blinking in the light from the hallway and wincing slightly when his black eye protested. “I’ll just get out of your way.” _Maybe I should go home, after all,_ he thought, tiredly.

Sakura flicked on the lights and caught Iruka’s shoulder when he brushed past her to leave.

“Not so fast,” she said, in the brisk, no-nonsense tone he associated with medi-nin like Shizune. He stopped almost before he heard what she’d said. “I can’t take a look at you if you don’t stay.” Tonton poked her head around the doorframe and made an inquisitive sort of noise.

“Yes, all right,” Sakura said distractedly, pushing Iruka to sit on the room’s bed, “you can go find Shizune and tell her I found him. Now,” she continued, looking directly at Iruka, “the eye I can see, but the rest of you is probably a mess too. Shirt off.” Iruka briefly considered refusing, just getting up and walking out, but habit ran too deep: you did what the medic said, even if the medic in question was a former student half your age. He couldn’t hide the slight wince as he pulled his shirt off: his arms were getting stiff, and it felt like one or two of the blows Kakashi had landed on his torso were a little worse than he’d thought.

Sakura didn’t do anything as unprofessional as react visibly to the bruises blooming across his forearms and torso, but she did increase the amount of chakra shimmering around her hands.

Iruka sat quietly as she started to work on his eye, feeling the swelling decrease, the ache gradually recede.

“Kakashi-sensei is an idiot sometimes.” Sakura said after a few moments of silence. Iruka didn’t say anything in response: he didn’t think any reply was really necessary.

She was quiet for a moment. “He is sorry, you know,” she said finally, “he’s just not going to be very good at saying so.” Iruka made a sort of noncommittal noise, and Sakura just kept talking. “He made sure your tea was steeped right, even though he said you weren’t coming back, and he was watching the door.”

Iruka turned when she tugged at his shoulder, letting her start on his back.

When Sakura had finished, and was handing him back his shirt, Iruka heard a sort of happy squeal, and looked down to see Tonton peeking into the room again. Sakura turned toward the little pig, and appeared to listen to its squeals and grunts the same way Tsunade and Shizune did.

“All right,” she said, looking downwards, “you’ve seen for yourself, now you can go back to Shizune.” Tonton cocked her head to one side, but didn’t move.

“Get going!” Sakura ordered, pointing down the hallway (towards Kakashi’s room, he noticed). Tonton made several inquisitive sounding grunts, and Sakura frowned.

“Yes, well, you can tell her to tell Kakashi-sensei that if he wants to know whether Iruka-sensei is feeling better, he can _come see for himself_!” Tonton made a face, but trotted off down the hallway in the direction she’d pointed.

“Sorry about that,” Sakura said, turning back to Iruka. “Tonton doesn’t really listen to me very well yet.” Iruka gave her a small smile.

“That seemed to work well enough,” he said, nodding towards the hallway.

“Sure,” Sakura said, “but that’s because Shizune wanted her to come back so she can tell Kakashi you’re fine and get him off her back.” Iruka blinked.

“Look,” Sakura said, “I know it’s not really any of my business, but –– but Kakashi-sensei has looked happier recently, you know? You both have.” She flushed a little bit, and nodded toward the door. “I should start my rounds,” she said, stepping back.

“Sakura-chan,” Iruka said, before she could leave, “thank you.”

She looked awkward and uncomfortable for a moment; then she nodded before flashing him a tired smile and walking out into the hallway, tying her hair back with practiced movements.

Iruka sat still for a few minutes before standing and heading to the door himself.

 

* * * * *

 

Kakashi woke to the feeling of fingers in his hair, smoothing strands back from his forehead, sweeping through the messy tangle. It was a pleasant, if long unfamiliar, sensation. He waited for a moment before opening his eye to see Iruka sitting by his bedside. Iruka no longer had a black eye: Kakashi felt almost swamped with relief for that small favor.

“What are you doing?” he asked, voice rough with sleep and disuse, sharp with surprise.

Iruka pulled his hand back and looked away. “I –“ he said, “it’s something my mother used to do when I was sick.”

He stood, visibly pulling away, walling himself off in a way Kakashi hadn’t seen him do before. It made him look hard and strange, like someone Kakashi didn’t know at all. Kakashi knew, suddenly, that if Iruka left, he wouldn’t come back until Kakashi was asleep again, until he didn’t feel unwelcome in Kakashi’s presence. And, Kakashi realized, Iruka might not come back at all. The thought wrenched unpleasantly, almost physically painful.

“Don’t stop,” he said, into the silence. Iruka looked down at him, but didn’t respond.

Kakashi took a breath, then added, the words an offering of sorts, hoping Iruka would recognize the gesture for what it was, how much it implied. “My father did that sometimes, when I was a child.” Iruka still just looked at him.

“I’m sorry.” Kakashi said, feeling the words drop like stones into a deep well. “Please, don’t stop.”

Iruka’s face softened just a little bit. He sat back down, and slowly settled his hand back on Kakashi’s head, running his fingers through Kakashi’s hair again.

“All right,” Iruka said, “I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
